Search Results for: Wormhole

Zombie Wormhole Publicity Stunt

Posted on August 2, 2024 by woit

I had thought that the Wormhole Publicity Stunt could now be safely ignored, with almost everyone in the physics community agreeing that this was an embarrassing disaster that was dead and buried. Even the people at Quanta had realized that … Continue reading →

Posted in Fake Physics, Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 14 Comments

Wormholes, Part Deux

Posted on May 27, 2024 by woit

I had thought that the universally negative reaction to the fall 2022 wormhole publicity stunt meant that we’d never hear more about this, with even the editors of Quanta magazine having understood that they’d been had. While away on vacation … Continue reading →

Posted in Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 4 Comments

Yet More on the Wormholes

Posted on February 27, 2023 by woit

The paper explaining that this Nature cover story, besides being a publicity stunt, was also completely wrong, has so far attracted very little media attention. The first thing I’ve seen came out today at New Scientist, a publication often accused … Continue reading →

Posted in Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 13 Comments

Latest on the Wormholes

Posted on February 17, 2023 by woit

I had thought that the wormhole story had reached peak absurdity back in December, but last night some commenters pointed to a new development: the technical calculation used in the publicity stunt was nonsense, not giving what was claimed. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 10 Comments

Wormhole Publicity Stunts: Past, Present and Future

Posted on December 9, 2022 by woit

Most of the news I’m hearing today about the current wormhole publicity stunt is that physicists who could do something about it are instead blaming any problem on journalists and defending the stunt as some sort of progress forward. I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 13 Comments

The Wormhole Publicity Stunt

Posted on December 3, 2022 by woit

The best way to understand the “physicists create wormholes in the lab” nonsense of the past few days is as a publicity stunt (I should credit Andreas Karch for the idea to describe things this way), one that went too … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype, Wormhole Publicity Stunts | 59 Comments

String Theorists Suggest Space Wormholes Possible

Posted on August 18, 2011 by woit

I was just out for a bike ride, during which an idle thought came to me about a rule of thumb that might deserve publicity. This rule of thumb is that the mention of wormholes in a popular science book, … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 13 Comments

Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman

Posted on June 9, 2010 by woit

The Science Channel is starting up yet another show on physics tonight, with Michio Kaku’s Sci-Fi Science and Into the Universe with Steven Hawking being joined by Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. The topics being covered by Freeman are … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments

Living in a Post-truth World

Posted on November 6, 2024 by woit

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when fundamental physics was making huge dramatic progress and Western democracies were changing in equally dramatic ways, mostly for the better. It truly did seem that the Age of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 58 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 16, 2024 by woit

Today’s Washington Post has an opinion piece from Brian Greene, running under the demonstrably false title Decades later, string theory continues its march toward Einstein’s dream. In the piece, the argument of string theory critics is given as: Critics argue … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 48 Comments